History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To the Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) eBook

Euergetes was so bloated with disease that his body
was nearly six feet round, and he was made weak and
slothful by this weight of flesh. He walked with
a crutch, and wore a loose robe like a woman’s,
which reached to his feet and hands. He gave
himself up very much to eating and drinking, and on
the year that he was chosen priest of Apollo by the
Cyrenians, he showed his pleasure at the honour by
a memorable feast which he gave in a costly manner
to all those who had before filled that office.
He had reigned six years with his brother, then eighteen
years in Cyrene, and lastly twenty-nine years after
the death of his brother, and he died in the fifty-fourth
year of his reign, and perhaps the sixty-ninth of
his age. He left a widow, Cleopatra Cocce; two
sons, Ptolemy and Ptolemy Alexander; and three daughters,
Cleopatra, married to her elder brother; Tryphsena,
married to Antiochus Grypus; and Selene unmarried;
and also a natural son, Ptolemy Apion, to whom by will
he left the kingdom of Cyrene; while he left the kingdom
of Egypt to his widow and one of his sons, giving
her the power of choosing which should be her colleague.
The first Euergetes earned and deserved the name,
which was sadly disgraced by the second; but such was
the fame of Egypt’s greatness that the titles
of its kings were copied in nearly every Greek kingdom.
We meet with the flattering names of Soter, Philadelphus,
Euergetes, and the rest, on the coins of Syria, Parthia,
Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Pon-tus, Bactria, and Bithynia;
while that of Euergetes, the benefactor, was
at last used as another name for a tyrant.

CHAPTER VI—­THE GROWTH OF ROMAN INFLUENCE IN EGYPT

The weakness of the Ptolemies: Egypt bequeathed
to Rome: Pompey, Caesar, and Antony befriend
Egypt.

On the death of Ptolemy Euergetes II., his widow,
Cleopatra Cocce, would have chosen her younger son,
Ptolemy Alexander, then a child, for her partner on
the throne, most likely because it would have been
longer in the course of years before he would have
claimed his share of power; but she was forced, by
a threatened rising of the Alexandrians, to make her
elder son king. Before, however, she would do
this she made a treaty with him, which would strongly
prove, if anything were still wanting, the vice and
meanness of the Egyptian court. It was, that,
although married to his sister Cleopatra, of whom
he was very fond, he should put her away, and marry
his younger sister Selene; because the mother hoped
that Selene would be false to her husband’s cause,
and weaken his party in the state by her treachery.